To accept and process Municipal online payments, or not……
Hi – welcome and thank you for visiting our Municipality Payment Solutions page. We are pleased you have found us, and welcome the opportunity to explain the benefits of accepting and processing
municipality payments in your community with a Paygrip approved, PCI compliant municipality payments merchant account solution.

As the economy shifted into a downtrend in 2008, municipalities began to collect less revenue across the board, impacting many community programs and services, not typically noticed in an upbeat economy.
Delinquency spiked in real estate property tax bills, fishing/hunting permit purchases and parks recreation visitation dropped significantly in some portions of the country. It was during this economic
downturn that many residents began requesting a pay ticket online option, including utility billing services. Soon, municipalities began to realize that collecting more payments was limited by only accepting checks.
Many town managers soon realized – tax payers without money in their checking account couldn’t pay their municipality bills, however – they were willing to pay their bills with a credit card payment!
(This simple realization saved many small towns during the worst economic downturn our country had experienced in generations).

As the economy started to recover, many large municipalities started to use municipal online payments to drive new revenue to other departments such as offering fishing licenses when paying your real estate property
taxes, or utility bills. Paying a traffic ticket? Maybe it’s time to ask if the resident would also like to register their vehicles, pets, or donate a small amount to the Parks and Recreation fund? The point is –
recent municipality payment acceptance has been focused on the cultivation and creation of new revenue streams. Accepting municipality payments is the first step to discovering new ways to generate revenue through
your local city/town/municipal website. Either by paying a bill, paying a fine or processing a payment for a permit, accepting online payments for your municipality is a fantastic way to interact with your
community and create new revenue streams.

In the not so distant past - accepting municipal payments cost 2-3% of total sales revenue collected through any POS (point of sale), credit card machine, or online payment gateway. Visa/MC has more recently
adjusted rules and regulations that allow municipalities to add convenience fees to credit card charges paid through credit card machines and online payment gateways. Now, the cardholder can be legally charged
for the processing fee – bypassing the normal fees a municipality would incur with a merchant account. What was once a barrier – has now become an almost instant hit – a virtually cost free billing option for
municipalities. And with that -the ability to process municipality payments is helping local governments, cities and towns create new sources of revenue, and in some cases - allows them to give back to the community.